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samallen3
samallen3
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Index Tab Leaders

May 8, 2012 9:22 AM

Tags: #cs5 #indesign #index #indexing #leader_dots #leader #tab_leaders #index_with_tab_leaders #generate_index

I have generated an index with tab leaders in Indesign CS5.  Everything works great, with one exception.  When I set the leader dots, some entires don't work.  I'm not sure why because I set up the index to put a tab after every entry.  Screen shot 2012-05-08 at 11.53.16 AM.jpg

As you can see, "Messy" is not following the tab leader rule I set like so:

Screen shot 2012-05-08 at 11.53.42 AM.jpg

Can someone please tell me what I'm doing to cause this or offer a solution.  There are quite a few like this and it is a fairly large index so going through manually would be a pain.  Here are the settings I used as well:

Screen shot 2012-05-08 at 11.53.54 AM.jpg

Thanks in advance for reading and helping me out.

2802 Views   10 Replies   Latest reply: samallen3, May 10, 2012 9:19 AM
 
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  • Peter Spier
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    1. Peter Spier,
    May 8, 2012 9:31 AM   in reply to samallen3
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    Are you sure there isn't a second tab set in that paragraph?

     
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  • samallen3
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    2. samallen3,
    May 8, 2012 9:38 AM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    You mean in the index entry?  I checked and none of them have second tabs set.  and I thought that might be the problem too, but when I show the hidden charcters the index seems to be generating correctly, it's just when I set the leader dots afterwards that it decides to skip some entries.

     

    The charcter in the tabs panel is an indent marker (I know it's kinda hard to see) for longer entires that may span two lines.

     
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  • Joel Cherney
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    3. Joel Cherney,
    May 8, 2012 9:39 AM   in reply to samallen3
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    I'm pretty sure it's because you have a hanging indent:

     

    Untitled.png

     

    If I'm right, only the shortest entries are exhibiting this behavior.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    4. Peter Spier,
    May 8, 2012 10:13 AM   in reply to Joel Cherney
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    Joel, why would the hanging indent do that? I thought perhaps there was a seond tab set at that position which had no leader, but that's hard to know unless we're looking at the tabs rule with the cursor in the odd paragraph.

     
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  • Joel Cherney
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    5. Joel Cherney,
    May 8, 2012 10:38 AM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    I've never known why I don't need to actually set a tab stop at the hang when I make hanging indents.  But it's been this way since InDesign CS at least - if you set up a hanging indent, then the place where it hangs is treated as a tab stop. I don't know for certain that the cursor is in the "Messy" entry in that screenshot, but I suspect that all of the index entries have the same paragraph style, and that the indent is set up in that parastyle.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    6. Peter Spier,
    May 8, 2012 10:43 AM   in reply to Joel Cherney
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    OK, I get your logic.

     
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  • samallen3
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    7. samallen3,
    May 8, 2012 12:06 PM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    Screen shot 2012-05-08 at 3.04.55 PM.jpg

    Here's what you're looking for.  The tab isn't there.  Do I need to get rid of the indent?

     
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  • samallen3
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    8. samallen3,
    May 8, 2012 12:14 PM   in reply to Joel Cherney
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    I just changed the indents within my Index para. styles and made the leader dots part of the paragraph style instead.  Everything seems to be okay now.  Thanks for your help guys.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    9. Peter Spier,
    May 8, 2012 12:15 PM   in reply to samallen3
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    samallen3 wrote:

      Do I need to get rid of the indent?

    Why not try just making it a bit smaller and see what happens?

     

    The other option might be to use a Right Indent tab instead of the regualr right aligned tab you've specified. To get the leader use a nested character style that adds a custom underline to the tab character.

     
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  • samallen3
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    10. samallen3,
    May 10, 2012 9:19 AM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    That is a good suggestion, I don't think I have used nested styles before.  I will try both and see how they pan out.  Thanks.

     
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